


your teeth in my neck

by euphoriaspill



Category: On My Block (TV)
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Drug Addiction, Drug Dealing, F/M, Gangs, Gun Violence, Homophobic Language, Mental Institutions, Molestation, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Prison, Psychosis, Statutory Rape, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2020-04-06 21:37:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19071154
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphoriaspill/pseuds/euphoriaspill
Summary: Back in Freeridge for the first time in four years, Natalia Diaz has to juggle a dangerous new boyfriend, an escalating gang war, and two brothers with very different dreams for the future.





	1. constraint

**Author's Note:**

> ... yes, i'm back on my bullshit, and i will not rest until give this new hyperfixation a sister fic. 
> 
> blanket warning on this— a major plotline, like i tagged, is about statutory rape that the protagonist doesn't perceive as assault (because she's 14 and thinks she's full grown). these aren't my views.

“Nati, you’re not going to school like that.”

She takes a sip out of her OJ instead of acknowledging that she heard him. If she listened to everything that came out of Oscar’s mouth, she’d never leave the few square feet of dead grass and broken lawn chairs they call a backyard.

“ _Natalia_.”

“Yeah?” Her fork hovers somewhere around her mouth; one thing she missed, living at Lucia’s, Oscar’s cooking. He can make an omelet like nobody’s business. “What?”

He throws his phone down and glares at her directly now. “I told you the first time, go wash that shit off your face.”

“It’s just mascara and lipgloss, God." She fights the urge to roll her eyes at his attempts to play the dad, not very well. “Lucia let me use all her points at Sephora. This is nothing.”

His favorite lecture starts in three, two, one. “I don’t care what Lucia let you do, I said go wash that shit off your face. You’re fourteen. I’m not gonna have gangbangers coming in here, tryna stake a claim on you, lady.”

“What, like that’d be my fault? Tell your creepy friends not to look at me, then, if you're so pressed.”

Cesar finally pipes in— “you really need to get more woke, _mano_.” She kicks him under the table and flashes him a grateful smile; it’s rare that he dares talk back to Oscar, and even rarer for him to do it in her defense.

“I’m gonna go over there one of these days and ask her what the fuck she's smoking, _hijo de puta_.” The bacon in front of him might as well be a Prophet, with all the force he’s using to stab it. “You didn’t used to swear, you didn’t used to smoke, you didn’t used to dress like a _chola_ —“

“Cesar didn’t used to drink or carry a gun around, either.” She tilts her head. “We used to be eleven.”

He slams his hand down on the edge of the table. “You got a smartass answer to everything now?”

Diego crashes through their front door then, cutting the rant short, to pick them up for school: he and Oscar do their customary back slap and complicated handshake, a little longer than necessary. He still isn’t used to him being out of Corcoran, nobody is. “You doin’ okay, Lil’ Spooky?” he calls over the top of Oscar’s shaven head. “No broken ribs, right?”

Cesar gives him a pained smile, his hand hovering around his diaphragm; she saw him coming out of the shower yesterday with just a towel on, knows the messy splatter of purple and blue bruises his black t-shirt is hiding. “Nothing I can’t handle.”

“That’s tight.” Diego stares at her for a few seconds, his gaze finally settling on her chest. “Lookin’ good, _nenita_.”

Oscar grasps his knife so hard his knuckles turn white, but he doesn’t say anything. Nati preens, grabs her bag, and flounces out the door before Cesar can call shotgun.

 


	2. ignition

Adrian is waiting for her in the parking lot once school’s over. She takes a quick look around to see if Cesar or one of his dopey friends is watching, then hops in.

“Get your feet off my dash,” he says immediately, but she grins at him and splays her toes out anyway, and he grins back just as fast. “First day go all right?”

“Yeah, it was okay, same old shit,” she says as he sticks the key into the ignition and drives away. She got out of the habit of good grades at Lucia’s, regular attendance too. “I have to head home soon, Oscar’s on my case again.” She pulls a face, just to emphasize how much _she_ doesn’t agree.

“He’s got a point, things been heating up with the Prophets lately.” She scowls and messes with the radio dial until she hits a station playing Ariana— that’s not what she wanted to hear, especially not after this morning. “Guess we’ll have to make the most of what we got, _mamacita_ —“ he takes his eyes off the road long enough to suckle her neck, and it melts her recalcitrance like butter. “There’s some Jack in the console.”

She only swallows enough to burn her lips— Oscar lets Cesar drink, probably because Jesús and Ángel did, but she’s not too eager to relive the time she came home lit over the summer— and he snatches the bottle pretty quick anyway, gulps so much his throat bulges. It scares her if she lets herself think about it, how he drives without lifting his foot off the gas and swerves into other lanes and hit the highway divider once, but she’s not willing to admit it out loud. She’s not a kid.

“You get me, Nati, you know?” He takes his eyes off the road again to give her a long stare, real serious, like something out of The Notebook. “You’re so different from all the other _hynas_ in the crew. Maybe because you’ve been through some shit.” She wonders why he’s saying all this, then she realizes they’ve pulled up behind the abandoned convenience store, and he’s fishing inside his wallet for a Trojan.

She gets nervous sometimes, if she hasn’t had enough to drink, so she takes another quick swig of booze that makes her eyes water. Starts thinking about her small tits, crooked canine tooth, the baby fat on her cheeks that all the makeup in the world can’t contour away. The first time they fucked, in her twin bed while Lucia slept off a Jäger night, she hadn’t even wanted to take her top off.

He presses her against the leather of the backseat and kisses her until she relaxes, giggles a little into the salty skin at the dip of his collarbone. “Let’s give Oscar something to worry about,” he says as he pulls her shirt off over her head, and she sighs and closes her eyes, the afternoon sun making dizzy patterns on the lids.

 


	3. query

“Heard Monse smacked you the fuck up earlier.” She leans against Cesar’s doorframe and smirks; he looks nauseous. “I told you, _mano_ , you're out of her league.”

(She doesn't know Monse well enough to dislike her, but does think Cesar is dating down, sue her. He’s a Santo now, and they don't need no Tinder accounts— thirsty  _hynas_ swarm wherever they walk. He could do a lot better than small tits and frizzy hair.)

“Oscar was making a pass at her. Said she was growing up fine— I couldn’t risk it.” He looks up at her beseechingly. “I don’t care if she hates me, I had to protect her.”

“Maybe he didn’t mean it— whatever, it doesn’t matter now, right?” She wishes she could say what Oscar’s like, after four years apart from him. “You’re a Santo. Your _ruca_ is your business.”

“I don’t want any of this.” He interlocks his fingers, presses them together so hard she’s afraid he’s trying to break them. “I don’t _want_ to be a Santo.”

They used to be so close before Oscar went inside— the twins, indistinguishable to either their mom or their dad, gemini. “You’re a pussy, that’s why.” The words come out harsh; sometimes she wants to be teasing and ends up saying the truth instead. “What’s your problem, anyway?”

“Yeah, it’s easy for you to say, isn’t it? You’re a _hyna_ , is all. Nobody’s sticking a gun in your hand and telling you that you better get that target practice straight.”

“I wish I was a guy,” she says, alcohol giving her courage she wouldn’t have had otherwise. “I’d be better at it than you, _mierda_. Jesús and Ángel said it, I hit more targets than you anytime.”

“Yeah, Oscar probably wishes that, too.” He buries his face into his pillow; she wishes she could comfort him. “Are you and Adrian a thing?” He asks it innocently enough, but she knows even Cesar isn’t that naive, and her blood still freezes in her veins. She can sniff out the undercurrent of malice in his voice better than any K-9 ever could. “You two are always driving around together.”

“No, why the hell would we be?” Adrian told her what to say if anyone asked shit like that, she’s not stupid. _Other people ain’t gonna understand, they won’t think that we’re in love, they’ll call you some kind of victim, they don’t get that you’re really so much older than fourteen—_ “He’s like my brother.”

There’s always this little knife of uncertainty that twists inside of her whenever she talks about Adrian, especially when she’s talking about him to Cesar, but then she remembers that Adrian's been around forever and she and Cesar haven’t really talked in four years, since Jesús and Ángel took him and Lucia got her. She knows where her loyalties lie.

“I’m your brother, Nati,” he says, lulled into sleepiness by the beer Oscar gave him. “I’ll fuck anyone up for you. Just say the word.”

“ _Sure_.”

 

 

 


	4. sisters

“Anyone fucked you yet, _nenita_?” Lucia stares at her through fake eyelashes, smiles like she’s expecting a real answer. “You’re older than I was, my first time.” She taps her nails, neon pink and shiny, on the edge of the table; Nati's mind drifts back to when she raked those nails across her forehead, the two of them rolling around like some shit off World Star. “ _Twelve_ , Jesus. Hope you aren't doing nothing in the school bathroom. You always were smarter than me.”

“Yeah, Adrian.” Nati straightens her shoulders, even, sits up from how she was slouching in the kitchen chair. “He’s hittin’ it now, we made it official.” She imagines she’s joined a secret sisterhood here, finally become a woman, more than the morning she woke up with her stomach squeezed by a massive fist and blood sticky on her thighs.

“You remember what I told you, right?” Lucia blows a strand of her long bangs off the bridge of her nose, looking closer to thirteen than to twenty-three. “Doesn’t matter what he says he can’t feel, you _always_ make him wrap it up.”

“ _Prima_ , I’m not a kid, I paid attention in health class.” She actually snuck out during that period to smoke into the bathroom vents, but that’s beside the point.

“You could get HIV, or worse, pregnant. I ain’t raising no babies you bring home.”

“The hell are you doin’ here?” Oscar stumbles in through the back door and almost shoulder-checks her, just barely stops himself. He’s got his hand on his piece. “Did I say you were allowed in my crib, _puta_?”

Lucia snorts, clutches her phone in her fist like it's a pair of brass knuckles. “I raised your homegirl for you, Spooky, you don’t exactly get to keep me out.”

"She’s a real  _salvaje_ now, thanks to you,” Oscar says. “Every other word out her mouth is some hoodrat shit you let her do. Fuck outta here.”

She sniffs, sticks her nose in the air like she just smelled a pile of shit. “Gonna tell Cuchillos how you stay talking to me.”

“Tell Cuchillos if he wants to defend your honor, we can square up,” Oscar says, but his voice is as wobbly as some twelve-year-old kid’s before his first fistfight. “This still my crib, though.”

Lucia grabs her knockoff Gucci purse, slams the door on her way out. “Would you get off her case,” Nati says, which is when she remembers the joint smoldering between her fingers.

Oscar stoops to her level, his palms splayed against the tops of his thighs. “She give you that weed?”

“No.” She takes another drag on it just to spite him; her mouth feels like she’s been working a cotton ball around. “Diego did.”

He snatches it from her grasp and sticks it between his own lips. “Go play with your Barbies while I’m still in a good mood, _pequeña_. And don't lemme catch you smokin' up inside again. Can't get that smell out the carpet."

 


	5. prey

When she steps out into the parking lot and finds Nacho’s car there, she almost turns around and flees, runs back inside the arts trailers. But he just grins at her, wide enough to show his gold molars. and she moves towards him anyway, like a snake entranced by a charmer.

“I’m not gonna bite,” he says. “Spooky wanted me to pick you up from school, is all.”

“I’ll scream,” she says conversationally, flinging her bag into the backseat and settling in the front. Nacho floors it so hard, she almost gets whiplash. "Don't even try to pull nothing, _puto_. I’ll jump out and barrel-roll onto the freeway, see if I give a fuck.“

“Did Cesar talk shit to you about me?” he says amusedly, like they’re not talking about anything more significant than Youtube drama. “Girl, he wanted it, I promise, he’s just embarrassed. He wouldn’t have started drinking lean in my car if he hadn’t.”

He won’t tell, he refuses to tell Oscar— _he’ll kill him_ , he’d said, his blunt nails digging into her forearm, _he’ll kill him, he’ll end up back inside, you better not say shit, just please God stay away from him—_

He won’t tell because nobody dares call Bananas anything to his face, not when he’s both as masc and quick-tempered as he is, but behind his back, they’ve only got one word for him:  _maricón._  

“You know he doesn’t belong in the Santos.” He might as well be discussing the weather. Nati wishes she had the courage to turn on the radio and shut him up, or jump out of the car like she threatened to, but she doesn’t and digs her nails into her palms. “Cesar’s a pussy, you can smell it on him, he’s not cut out for this life. The only reason he claimed Monty’s lil’ bitch is to keep her away from Oscar.”

“I’m not really interested in a rapist's opinion of him.”

They pull up in front of her house, the wheels screeching against the curb; she shouldn’t have said it, she shouldn’t have had a mouth big enough to say it, but four years away from Freeridge made her forget herself. “You think I’m some real bad guy, huh?” He leans close to her ear, close enough that he licks the side of her temple; she holds herself still, refuses to give him the satisfaction of flinching away. “You think that _pendejo_ Adrian loves you? _Nenita_ , he's eight years older than you—he just knows you’re easy, is all. He knows you’ll spread your legs for anyone who tells you that you’re pretty and lets you get high for free.”

His hand is at the top of her thigh, creeps further up. “Hey, Nacho,” Adrian says, approaching the car, his smile easy and unsuspicious from too many beers. “You bring her home okay?”

“Yeah, _vato_.” Nacho smiles back and lets go of her before he can see. “Wouldn’t want anything to happen to Nati, you know me.”


	6. split

Every now and then, Nati takes the bus to go see her mother. Cesar doesn’t remember to, or maybe can't stand to. Oscar never cared to begin with.

She looks a wreck, she always does— the Abilify made her balloon up and something else made her drop weight crazy fast, giving her folds of loose skin that hang off her like an elephant’s. They’ve got her in restraints, but they’re not really necessary anymore. In the last couple years, she’s stopped talking at all.

She used to be real pretty. Even at her worst, when she only got out of bed to shoot up and then lay there all day, practically a dead thing, she’d put on makeup and mess with her hair like she had somewhere to go.

“Hey, Mom.” She never quite knows how to begin. “Cesar’s a Santo now. Got jumped in and everything.” Back when she still had a string of connection to reality, she would’ve liked that. “I just don’t think he’s gonna last. I think he wants out... but the only way out is getting a cap in you."

Isabel doesn’t even face her, blinks at one of the white brick walls. “We all got that... killer instinct in us, _sabes_?” She picks at a piece of loose skin around her thumb. “Like. Our family, we got a screw loose or something— even us, and we’re girls and we don’t need it. You put a knife through a guy’s stomach ‘cause he wouldn’t sell you any more crack on credit. You watched him bleed out onto the street, for fuck’s sake, Oscar says you was just laughing when the cops found you."

Oscar had cried, when he got home. _What if it’d been you, the two of you?_ he’d whispered into their hair, pulling them close, but Nati had rejected his sentimentality even then. The only thing their mother loved was _la droga_. It was the only thing she ever would’ve killed for.

Her mother lifts her hand into the air, opens and closes her fist like she’s remembering having a knife clutched in it. Nati shifts uncomfortably in the chair, her bare thighs sticking to the plastic; not for the first time, she wonders if she even realizes she’s here. “Why doesn’t Cesar have it?” she might as well be asking the table in front of them, for all the answers she’s ever going to get. “Why ain’t he like the rest of us?”

She doesn’t say some dumb sappy shit, like that she wishes she still had a mother, because she didn't have one to begin with, not really. Oscar brushed her hair and made her dinner and drove her to school, he was always the only one. Isabel’s absence feels no different from her presence, it never did.

Cesar was the mama’s boy, the one lying down with her all day, begging for her attention— but she’s locked up in her mind and there’s no key. She can’t save him now.


End file.
